If you’re in the “New Age” spiritual community, you will hear a lot about manifesting. Manifest the love of your life! Manifest a new house! A new job! Boatloads of money! The Secret taught us that the key to manifesting is envisioning what we want as though we already have it and truly feeling the gratitude that we would experience once this thing/person/experience is in our life. The options are endless! Life is magical!
When we envision ourselves with all of those fancy things or juicy ways of being, what we are attempting to do is identify ourselves with them energetically. We are sending a signal, “I am a person who is deserving and worthy of having this in my life.”
So what happens then when we identify with a feeling of lack, or we identify with an illness or a past hurt? We send an energetic signal of “I am a person who is not deserving of having my needs met,” and the Universe responds in kind. Continuing to not have our needs met often reinforces the feeling that we never have our needs met, creating a vicious cycle.
For the purposes of this post, let’s say that you have managed to identify and get past some of these blocks, and you’re starting to see the true potential for living a life of purpose, love, and validation, with all of your needs met. You recognize the power that you hold to create the life that you want, and you’re on your way to manifesting amazing things.
That’s where I was in my journey when I found myself in a beach house just north of Atlantic City for a spiritual growth retreat with a group of people whom I largely did not know. The circumstances of me being there were truly synchronicity at work, as well as the result of some major clearing I had recently done related to my Shadow and past programming. I felt that I had manifested this amazing opportunity and was curious to see what else I could bring into my life.
And then I manifested a piece of garbage.
As a group activity, we had planned to create a mandala on the beach out of natural, found objects that would gradually be reclaimed by the sand and the sea. Since arriving, members of the retreat had been collecting items from the beach to use in the mandala, and with my late arrival, I had to do this somewhat quickly. One of the first objects I found was a broken shell that was a mixture of white and a beautiful pale shade of lavender on the inside. With many of the retreat’s events being planned in the context of the chakra system, I felt inspired to collect items of all colors of the rainbow, and here I had my piece for the crown chakra already.
It was surprisingly easy to find shells and stones of the colors I needed. While I didn’t find a true green, I did manage to find a shell with a perfect heart naturally imprinted on the surface, and figured that was a pretty good fit for the heart chakra, even if it was a little more on the blue side. After about 15 minutes of walking along the beach, I found objects in all of the colors I needed.. except red. I hadn’t seen anything even close to red so far, and while I could have given up and looked for pink instead, I decided to pause and set an intention that I would be led to “something red”.
Off in the distance, pulled up away from the tide, there were three life guard stands set together. They caught my eye and I felt a really strong tug in that direction, so I walked straight there, barely paying attention to much of anything else on the way. As I approached, I noticed a gleam of red at the base of one of the stands, and my heart quickened at the thought that I had really managed to find something red! I got a little bit closer and the object came more clearly into view.. an empty beer can. Hardly the type of thing I wanted to add to our group mandala to be reclaimed by the sea. My excitement turned to disappointment, but a small voice inside said “if you could do it once, you can do it again!”
So again I paused, setting my intention to find something red, but this time, I very clearly set an intention for a red NATURAL object. About 30 feet in front of me was a storage shed, and I felt a familiar tug in that direction. When I got close, I noticed that there was some vegetation growing by the base of the shed, largely green, but then a little peek of red towards the roots. As it turned out, not only were the shoots red, but there were some small red leaves as well. I picked one of the leaves and my rainbow collection was complete!
While this experience may seem a little silly and even common place, there was a profound lesson in it for me: when setting an intention for something we wish to manifest, we need to be as clear and detailed as possible, while still leaving a little wiggle room to be provided with something even better than we could have imagined. Finding an empty beer can on the beach did me absolutely no harm. It took less than a minute to then find another red object, and didn’t interfere with my ability to complete the task I had set out on.
But what if I had set a vague intention that I would have more free time in my life and found myself on the receiving end of a pink slip? Or perhaps I was feeling especially ambitious and set an intention of accomplishing a tremendous amount of personal growth in a short period of time, only to find myself experiencing a devastating tragedy of the kind that forces major life changes?
We are constantly sending out energetic signals and they are answered in kind. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start adopting the practice of tacking on “with ease and grace, for my highest and best good” whenever setting an intention to manifest something new in my life. Maybe next time I’ll be taken directly to the beauty and avoid the junk altogether.
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